


Under the influence

by Poljupci



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Partners, Dialogue Heavy, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 16:57:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20156977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poljupci/pseuds/Poljupci
Summary: During an undercover assignment, Draco and Harry find themselves relaxing in a small, scenic Italian town. With cocktails and beer, they ponder life, circumstance and the sort of image they play for the public.





	Under the influence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cottonpadenthusiast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cottonpadenthusiast/gifts).

> For my lovely darling, happy birthday.

It had barely been a week since they’d arrived at Montecatini and their routine is still a malleable, fluid thing, uncertain of further developments. This part of it is solid, though. It is not dissimilar to their other routines, their usual plans and their past leisure times; it is a comfort they carried from London to all the cities their assignments led them to.

It is simply like this: meet after dinner, around nine-ish, find the nearest bar with the best view and drink whatever you felt like at the moment.

Sometimes they would drink something strong like whiskey or maybe some overpriced liquor specific to the place they were staying at, sometimes they would treat themselves to a shared bottle of wine – more often red than white – and sometimes they would feel like they deserved to have some fun and order the most ridiculous cocktail on the menu.

Sometimes they would match their drinks, or order complimentary ones to share, unbothered by drinking from the same glass unless they were in the company of someone not used to their unusual acts of friendship. Tonight, however, they order on a whim, quickly and without much thought, both of them tired and irritated by the unsuccessful day of research.

They are nursing their cups, glaring at the chattering crowd around them, the scent of grilled fish mixing with whiffs of lavender and the salt of the sea. Harry’s pint of beer is half empty and Draco’s Aperol spritz is barely touched. It’s a while before either of them speaks, both of them enjoying the moment of peaceful, comfortable silence of each other.

“Malfoy?”, Harry calls then, just as a loud German couple walks passed them, chattering away and pulling their poodle after them. Draco’s eyes are following the dog but he lifts them up to meet the ones of his partner

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever wish to just walk away?” Harry holds eye contact for a moment, a troubled expression running lines on his forehead before he looks away.

“What do you mean?” Draco full attention is now on the man before him, his hands gripping his glass tightly, taking a sip before the conversation grows. He grimaces at the bitter taste and sets the glass back onto the table just as Harry shrugs and looks back up at him.

“I mean... Just like this – “, his hand motions at the street behind Draco, at the crowd, the cheer and the night, “ – go on an undercover assignment and just stop reporting... change your hair, maybe skip a town or two while you try to find who you want to be in this new life. Just... disappear.”

Draco stares at him a moment, furrowing his eyebrows and as the silence between them stretches on, Harry sighs and lowers his head, ready to dismiss the whole topic. Just as he’s about to shake his head and comment on something banal like the weather, Draco shakes his and gulps down a bit more of the cocktail as if the bitterness will ground him.

“I must admit, Potter,” he starts slowly, careful of the sensitivity of the words, testing out the importance the conversation holds for his partner. “I’ve never really thought about something like this. Why are you asking?”

Harry blinks and then laughs quickly. “Oh, no reason! I was just... under the influence.” He chuckles once more and picks up his beer to get his point across.

“I guess,” Draco shrugs, hesitant to let the topic go but he’s known Potter for nearly three decades and been his friend for the half of that. Potter was nothing if not stubborn – pushing him to open up would do no good. And so, Draco waits in silence for Harry to start talking when he feels like it’s okay. Sure enough, he has time for only two sips of his drink before Harry takes a breath and speaks.

“Sometimes I feel like life would be so much easier if I was born somewhere warm, near the sea, near the music and wine and...” His voice drifts of and his eyes are seemingly fixed on the roof of the church on the top of the hill but Draco sees he is unfocused, distant.

“Why don’t you move?”, Draco suggests and twirls the glass between his fingers, his posture relaxed but his gaze focused on Harry’s uncertain frown.

“No, I can’t,” Harry shakes his hand and intertwines his fingers to crack his knuckles like he often did when he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands. “I’m tainted with the cold and the dark of my life up to this moment; every pore of mine is clogged with smoke and screams and nightmares. I’m too heavy to fit into a place like this – people here are supposed to be able to float.”

“And there’s nothing you can do?”

“Some things help...” Harry lets a small smile grace his lips and Draco’s heart skips a beat then calms down.

“Like?”, he prompts, shifting in his seat so he could hold his head up with his elbow rooted in the metal table.

“Like this...” Harry shrugs.

“Undercover assignments?” Draco grins when that earns him a chuckle.

“No,” Harry smiles up at him, their eyes meeting and Draco lets his shoulders slump as Harry relaxes back into his seat, with ease. “Like wine and ridiculous but not overpriced cocktails. Like the sound of the sea and the smell of grilled fish and the comfort of the crowd. Like easy silences and bubbly laughter.”

“Seems to me like you just like the Mediterranean,” Draco chuckles teasingly and Harry rolls his eyes and then gets lost between the lights again.

“Perhaps,” he murmurs absent-minded and then adds, “But I still wonder...”

“Wonder what?”

“If it could heal me.” Harry shrugs again and Draco finally starts getting the grasp on how important this conversation is. He can see the tension in the seemingly relaxed lines of Harry’s body, worry in his unfocused eyes.

“If I just stepped away and came here,” Harry continues, “would it rebirth me in a way so I could become happier?”

“Maybe,” Draco answers. “But your old like would still be present in the shadows. Old lives are stubborn like that; they’re like stains.”

“Stains?”

“Yeah. Like your scar right there – “, Draco points a finger at Harry’s forehead, “ – it won’t go away.”

“Neither will yours,” Harry murmurs and his eyes are fixed on Draco’s chest, his pained expression deepening as if he could see his handiwork through Draco’s shirt.

“No, it won’t”, Draco sighs and takes his glass once again, looking away into the burning lights of opened restaurants that lined the street.

“I’m sorry,” Harry says and it shoots a spark of irritation through Draco’s body.

“Harry, stop it,” he sighs. “You’ve already apologised.”

“I know but I need to apologise again.”

“And you have – several times.” Draco pins him with a glare but Harry doesn’t look away. He holds Draco’s eyes until the blond is the one who looks away.

“I know that too,” Harry finally replies. “But something about tonight – “ he rushes his fingers through the mess of his curls and pulls at a fistful of hair, “ – It feels different. And I hoped that if I apologised tonight, it would make me feel better.”

“Well, I think you should just accept that I’ve forgiven you,” Draco states firmly but Harry doesn’t answer with anything but a hum. The silence stretches between them. It pulls heavy at their limbs and their thoughts alike. Draco shivers, unnerved by the lack of words between them like he hasn’t since their first weeks together as Auror partners nearly ten years ago.

“Draco?”, Harry calls in a voice so soft it makes Draco’s heartache. The nervous flicker of Harry’s restless eyes bothers him and he impulsively reaches out across the table and takes Harry’s hand.

“Yeah?”, he murmurs, staring at their loosely intertwined fingers with just as much confusion as Harry. He shifts before Harry can speak and grips his hand tighter –solid support. Harry sighs and squeezes back, gliding his thumb across Draco’s knuckles.

“Do you think we could do it?”, Harry asks and his thumb stills. His eyes are fixed on their hands but Draco can look nowhere but his face, shining in low light.

“Do what?”

“Disappear.”

Draco considers it for a moment. “Together or apart?”

“Either, I guess...” Harry shrugs and then his shoulders slump. His eyes flicker at the waiter who came to serve the table next to theirs and for a moment his fingers twitch. Draco thinks he might pull away from the touch but he never does.

“Together, no.” Draco shoots him a small smile, confident and bright, encouraging but no matter how calm he seems on the outside his insides are boiling with anticipation. They’d never held hands before. It makes him excited and nervous at the same time, his entire being fluttering. Harry _did_ say it felt like a special night, though...

“Apart, yes,” he continues. “But only if we didn’t know the other was going to disappear too.”

“Why so negative?”, Harry asks with the smallest of grins but it still makes Draco warm inside.

“If we didn’t do it together but knew of the other’s similar plan, it would turn into a competition and they would figure us out sooner rather than later,” Draco quickly explains with a tilt to his head.

“And if we did it together?” Harry is fully smiling by then, amused, his fingers drawing circles on the back of Draco’s palm in a way that convinces Draco it is nearly subconscious.

“That’s the same story with a different face,” Draco waves, almost dismissively but then sighs and clarifies anyway. “We would bicker constantly and people would assume we were in some toxic relationship, call the cops and we would be screwed.”

“You think we look like a couple?” Harry’s smile wavers and the relentless press of his fingers on Draco’s comes to a stop.

“You don’t?”, Draco questions but it is clearly the wrong thing to say. Harry pulls his hand free and puts it in his lap with his other, cracking his knuckles.

“I-I don’t know,” he murmurs and looks away, the hesitant furrow of his brows back on.

Draco regards him curiously, worries creeping from his toes to his knees, up his legs and then settles low in his gut. “Well,” he starts carefully, “for your information, ever since we came here, I hadn’t been flirted with _once_.”

“And?”

“And?!”, Draco gapes at him, even though he knows Potter is just playing with him. “I’m usually flooded with offers!”

“Well,” Harry clears his throat. “That doesn’t mean anything. Italians might just be more polite than your usual crowd...”

“Have you ever met an Italian?”, Draco asks, staring at him, completely unamused.

“Touché,” Harry chuckles and Draco’s heart feels light again. The silence that follows turns out to be more comfortable than the last but Draco’s still eager to break it.

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” he says, sincerely and Harry quickly shakes his head.

“Oh no, no, you didn’t. Really, I’m okay... But you know me... It’s all in appearances and even here, people like to gossip. I wouldn’t like to burden you with something that doesn’t exist.”

“Trust me when I say it, Potter: people thinking that we’re dating is not a burden at all.”

“It isn’t?”, Harry asks with a snort and raised eyebrows, only mildly surprised.

“No. It’s quite endearing actually,” Draco mutters with a shrug and Harry looks at him strangely.

“Is it now?”

“Well, yes. We are conjoined in a way when you think about it,” Draco continues and he can’t help but notice Harry leaning closer and closer in his chair as if Draco’s words are pulling him towards the source.

“Are we?”

“I think we are. We do share a profound bond.” Draco’s fingers twirl in the air in from of him in a pretentious manner and then, without his consent he yawns. Harry laughs into his face and takes a couple of gulps of his lukewarm beer.

“And why makes you think we are bonded, Draco?”

“Well, we do keep getting back to each other – I mean, one would think that people who were sworn enemies would do anything to avoid each other, ignore each other at the very least and here we are –“ his fingers flick towards his cocktail and Harry’s beer, “ – fraternizing!”

“Is that what we’re doing?”, Harry teases further.

“Of course we are. We are friends after all, aren’t we?”

“I guess we are,” Harry shrugs with such nonchalance that Draco questions if Harry’s fondness of him is there out of pure politeness. His thoughts are interrupted by Harry's voice then. “I guess you have a point too.”

“I do?” Draco stops in his tracks, his entire focus coming back to Harry.

“Yeah...” Harry glides his finger across the edge of his glass, around and around as he speaks. “We really are always somewhere around each other. It’s almost as if we have some special magnetic field that attracts us to each other.”

“Huh...” Draco stares at him and his vision blurs as he goes out of focus. He feels dizzy and confused and his thoughts are a mess and then a clear question reaches into him and he meets Harry’s confident smile.

“Wanna get out of here?”, Harry suggests with a flick of his eyes towards the street that leads to their hotel. Draco’s eyes move slowly from Harry’s smile to his eyes to his hands and the empty alley to his right, to the crowded street to his left and then to his glass.

“I haven’t finished my Aperol spritz,” he mutters and Harry snorts.

“Do you intend to?”, Harry asks, trying to catch Draco’s eyes and when he finally does Draco just shakes his head and gets up. He feels like he’s in a daze but he can’t figure out what’s come over him.

Once they’re walking down the alley he feels the dark and the quiet bring him back to his normal self.

“I really should’ve finished that Aperol spritz,” he comments to fill the silence. He doesn’t know why he feels like he can’t leave it to hang between them like it has so many times before but here he is, with stupid comments and desperate tries to spark a conversation.

“Was it any good?”

“No,” Draco chuckles and Harry follows quickly. “It was fucking awful. And I guess I realised I don’t really like the taste of oranges unless it’s in a real orange.”

“And you’ve eaten many _fake_ oranges lately?” Harry looks at him completely serious but Draco can nearly hear the laughter bubbling in his chest. He shoves him lightly.

“You know what I mean!”

And Harry does know but he doesn’t say so. Instead, he just chuckles and lets Draco pout or fume or muss all he wants. He can see the light of their hotel sign in the distance and as they walk, the air grows colder. The time stretches on and it seems like the distances between the street lamps are growing longer and longer.

Finally, when they are about two buildings from their destination, in a vague safety of darkness between two lamps, Harry catches Draco’s wrist. The blond halts in his steps and turns around with a question in his eyes but Harry interrupts him before he can ask it.

“Can I kiss you?” Harry’s voice trembles and his eyes fixate on Draco’s which widen.

“Are you still ‘under the influence’?” Draco asks warily, not taking his gaze from Harry’s nervous form. Harry takes his hands in his then and squeezes.

“No, I’m sane,” he says confidently with a crooked smile.

“Some people would beg to differ, judging by your last question.”

“Well, as long as some people don’t include you...” Harry shrugs then and pulls him closer by his hands. “So? Can I?”

“Is Italy making you do irrational things you will regret later?” Draco tilts his head and frowns at him, his heartbeat almost drowning every other sound.

“No,” Harry shakes his head and brings their hands up so he could kiss Draco’s knuckles. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for a while but I just wasn’t sure that you felt the same way...”

“And then all that talk about us dating...”, Draco follows his train of thought.

“Well, yeah,” Harry chuckles and lets their hand fall and untangle. He brings his right hand to rest on Draco’s upper arm and slides it up until it rests comfortably in the crook of his neck. “It gave me a bit of encouragement, to be honest.”

Draco lets him ruffle his hair and then after Harry murmurs something about him being a tease, he brings his hands to rest on the small of Harry’s back, embracing him and pulling them chest to chest, their heartbeats mixing into one another.

“You really want to kiss me, Auror Potter?” He lets his victorious grin flash through his fear.

“Despite it being entirely unprofessional, I do, Auror Malfoy.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Draco’s hand comes to cup Harry’s cheek and he’s leaning in, his lips a breath away when he pulls back. “Unless... Scared, Potter?”

Harry stares at him, uncertain if he should be smitten, irritated or turned on but in the end, he lets his body exist in the state of all three, rolling his eyes.

“Shut up, Malfoy,” he murmurs before he pulls him by the back of the neck their lips finally crashing in a fast exchange of emotion.

Open-mouthed kisses and moans escaping their throats, quick series of soft, chaste pecks and then biting each other’s lips, and tongues shoved into mouths and their slow and purposeful teasing until they are both half-hard and aching for more. It is everything and nothing at the same time and Draco feels like he was no one but a mortal worshipping an insatiable god.

“Oh god,” he gasps as Harry’s soft lips move to his neck, kissing and sucking, licking until there were love bites blooming on his pale skin. “Harry, take me to bed.”

“It’s too far away,” Harry mumbles and continues his escapades, moving up until Draco shudders from his kisses.

“Well, I’m not doing it with you _for the first fucking time_ on the street. Apparate us if you must,” Draco manages to respond through groans of pleasure.

“It’ll blow our cover,” Harry says, breathless as he finally pulls back to catch Draco’s eyes. Draco takes one look at him and decides that it’s impossible to take him seriously with his swollen lips and lust-blown eyes and flushed cheeks.

“So what?”, he challenges. “We can always disappear.”

Harry blinks at him and then with a grin that could’ve lighted up the entire city, he pulls him in for another kiss and disapparated.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please consider leaving kudos if you've enjoyed it and know that comments are always appreciated.


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